The Replaced (Taking Trilogy, #2)

by Kimberly Derting

[Leah]

****PLEASE BE AWARE THIS IS THE SECOND BOOK IN THE TAKING TRILOGY SO THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD****

Last year Kimberly Derting released the first book in her new series called The Taking. The novel actually surprised me, because I didn’t expect it to involve aliens. But it did and I kinda liked it anyway. I’m sceptical about aliens – despite the fact vampires and witches don’t bother me, but there’s just something about aliens. I was interested to see where the series would go regardless and nearly died of excitement when I saw The Replaced up on Edelweiss and I pushed aside all my other reads to get started on The Replaced.

The Replaced actually disappointed me somewhat. It’s your typical middle novel, with very little action and the plot wasn’t pushed forward as much as I would have liked, at least not until the very end. That’s when all the action really kicked in and I wished that it had been that way the whole novel. Because those last few chapters really had my heart racing and I’m curious once again to read the last book in the series because it didn’t half leave with a cliffhanger.

One of my favourite parts of The Taking was the romance between Kyra and Tyler, it was fantastic and so heart warming and just got me all giddy inside and that was missing in The Replaced. Instead we got a trope love triangle which wasn’t really a triangle since Tyler was missing. And I didn’t like Simon. It just seemed out of left field and I barely remembered Simon from the first book and I was totally shipping Kyra and Tyler and for Tyler to be gone and Simon to be in his place just felt wrong. I just couldn’t get on board with it.

I wanted so much more from The Replaced. There wasn’t much happening in the plot, like I said most of the action came too late, as the book was ending. It wasn’t a bad book, though, I just felt it was a filler novel. The real action is clearly coming in book three, and this was just the book to get us from book one to book three. In a way, I almost wish it had just been a standalone, but I’ll reserve full judgement of that until I’ve completed the series. I’m still not all that sure about aliens, it’s still a bit freaky for me, but the premise is still interesting and some of the revelations were intriguing enough for me to keep reading.